Ultraviolet light has a wavelength that is shorter than visible light, but is longer than X-rays. Ultraviolet light is typically considered to be light having a wavelength within the range of 10 nanometers to 400 nanometers. Ultraviolet light can help different substances glow or fluoresce and may also provide non-ionizing radiation.
Dental tools such as a dental explorer, a periodontal probe, a straight probe, a mouth prop, a dental mirror, a cheek retractor, a tongue retractor, a lip retractor, curette, a scaler, a tartar scraper, a scraper, a burnisher, an elevator, a dental forcep, a ligature, a distal end cuter, a file, an endodontic explorer, or a dental bur are commonly used during dental medical checkups or procedures such as a teeth cleaning, a root canal, a removal of one or more teeth, or other dental or orthodontic procedures.
Cleaning such tools can often take a fairly long period of time. The long period of time needed to clean or disinfect the tools can require delays in providing service to customers or require dentists or orthodontists to have a relatively large inventory of tools due to the fact that numerous tools are unclean after providing a service to one patient and need to be replaced with other tools while the dirty tools are cleaned.
It is believed that a new tool or device is needed that can permit quick and effective disinfection of one or more dental tools such as tools used by a dentist, dental hygienist, or orthodontist. Examples of such tools include rotary and hand endodontic files, reamers, paper points and Gutta Percha points. It would be preferred for such a tool or device to be configured so that tools could be quickly disinfected so that bacteria will not be introduced into a human body (e.g part of the mouth, part of a tooth canal, etc.) during a subsequent use of that tool. Such a delay would preferably be between 5 seconds and two minutes, such as a delay of 10, 20 or 30 seconds or one minute. The metallurgical properties of the tools may not be damaged by such disinfection.
It is further contemplated that dental products such as endodontic obturators, paper points, and Gutta Perch points could be disinfected with this invention. Incorporating the ultraviolet light within an obturator oven allows the molten Gutta Percha to be disinfected just prior to insertion of the obturator in the patient's root canal.